


Diabolism

by Love_andbalance



Series: Dark Fairy Tales [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Happy Ending, Historical Fantasy, Magic, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection, Revenge, Reylo - Freeform, Witchcraft, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:33:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25523668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_andbalance/pseuds/Love_andbalance
Summary: Based on a prompt by @rebelscumreylo on Twitter-"She wakes with the taste of smoke in her mouth and the word 'witch' branded on her skin with no memory of who she is or how she got there but there's a tug, a feeling of belonging that she follows until there is no road left and only the old farm house and him standing in the window."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Dark Fairy Tales [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848499
Comments: 22
Kudos: 121





	1. Wild Women

**Author's Note:**

> di·ab·o·lism  
> /dīˈabəˌlizəm/
> 
> noun: diabolism  
> 1\. worship of the Devil.  
> 2\. devilish or atrociously wicked conduct.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are the descendants   
> of the wild women that you forgot- Wild Embers, Nikita Gill

In the beginning there was only pain.

It crept into her consciousness before she was aware of anything else, before she knew where she was and indeed before she even knew _that_ she was, at all.

She had no past, no future, no self. She existed only as the pain that stretched on into eternity- until the darkness came and then somehow, she was that as well.

They pushed into her on all sides, at once limitless and limiting, until she realized that if pain and darkness were pressing into her, then she must be a thing for them to press in upon.

Then she had pain, and darkness, and the awareness that she was a being who could experience these things, and if she existed, then perhaps she could move…

She examined the thought and ran the desire out experimentally. The pain intensified in some part of her that she was being to realize was connected to her thoughts… and then she had something else. She had discovered a body that she could feel stretching away from her mind, both a home and an extension of herself.

He second attempt at movement, brought her another gift- sound. The pain in her body ripped a groan from her chest, which was rapidly followed by the rush of other sounds, though she couldn’t immediately identify them.

These things were familiar to her, in a vague and disconnected sort of way, as was the flavor that she had on her tongue. Taste was another gift, even an unpleasant one such as this, as was the memory of its name- smoke.

Sight came next, and she blinked up into the dim light of the sky, breathing quietly as stars twinkled into life and the setting sun tipped the color above her toward deep blue. She watched with interest as the moon rose above the treetops.

Eventually, her curiosity drove her to explore more of her surroundings and she rolled onto her side, realizing two things as she did so. The first was that she was nude. The second was that her nudity made her uncomfortable and ashamed.

She could recall no reason for that feeling beyond that it was some nebulous instinct or a lesson learned so deeply that it remained even once the memories of instruction had gone, so she ignored it as she pressed herself up slowly and looked around.

She was sitting on a pile of ash, her pale skin darkened with soot and stained with streaks of blood. The grass around her was burned black and charred for several feet, but beyond that wildflowers of white and yellow danced in the warm evening breeze. The birds in the trees were chirping the last of their songs for the day and she found the sound to be pleasant and soothing.

She still had no name, no past, and no identity, but now she had a body and a place to be, which was undeniably better than existing as nothing but the feeling of pain for eternity.

The pain was still there, mostly as a deep throbbing ache that seemed to come from everywhere at once, but she could discover no injuries anywhere on her body except the skin of her left forearm. She examined it closely, the deep burn and the word that it formed.

“WITCH” was spelled out in large letters on damaged flesh, her skin black and curling at the edges of wounds that were still raw and red and bloody. She felt the same discomfort and shame at the words as she did at her nudity, but no memories or explanations surfaced to explain her tumultuous emotions.

Unable to answer any of the many questions that tumbled through her mind, she pulled her knees up to her chin and watched as the sun slipped completely out of the sky and plunged the world to black. The wind on her skin cooled rapidly and she wished wistfully that she had a warm place to go, a place where she would be safe until she could figure out who and what she was.

“I want to go home,” she murmured as a single tear ran down her soot stained face.

Her longing stretched out around her, threading its way through the trees until a feeling of certainty swept over her. If she wanted to go home, then she only needed to get up and go there.

She had no reason to suspect that such an idea wouldn’t work, since she had no ideas at all about how anything worked, so she struggled to her feet and set off in the direction that seemed most likely to get her somewhere.

The well-worn path that she discovered at the edge of the clearing seemed to be a sign that her instincts had been correct and after a moment of indecision she turned her feet to follow it to the north as it crept off into the night.

***

It was dawn when she finally arrived. She had left the road behind some time ago, following a small path that had led off the main track and into the secluded darkness of the trees.

Her feet were bare, and it was even more difficult to see when the foliage had blocked the light of the moon, so the journey had taken her longer than it might have done otherwise as she tripped over rocks and stumbled over roots.

The path had finally brought her to a two-story white farmhouse, and she stopped uncertainly, staring at its gently sloping roof and many shimmering windows. Smoke poured from the chimney, and a brief shudder racked her body, but it didn’t feel threatening.

It felt like home, like warmth and comfort and safety, but she had no memory of it. No sudden rush of images appeared to tell her how or why she knew this place.

She hugged her arms around herself, shivering in the night air as she tried to decide what to do now.

A movement in an upstairs window caught her eye and she raised her eyes to find the silhouette of a man outlined against the glass. He was still for the space of several heartbeats, as though frozen to the spot as he looked down at her. Then he turned quickly and disappeared from sight.

She sagged in disappointment. Perhaps she was wrong, and she was not welcome here.

She had turned away and taken several dejected steps back down the path when the door to the house burst open with a bang and the man ran out with a large blue blanket in his hands.

He was a great lumbering bear of a man, with dark shaggy hair and pale skin. He was barefoot and wearing nothing but a pair of black breeches that he hadn’t time to fasten properly. Her eyes widened at the sight of his bare chest and she took a step back as he ran toward her with a look of utter disbelief on his face.

He stopped when he got close enough to see her fear and stared at her in silence for several long minutes while the muscles of his throat worked convulsively, as though he would begin to speak and then swallow down the words before he could utter them.

He really _was_ large, big enough that he towered over her now that he stood so close, but his face was handsome- warm amber eyes watched her intently and he had lips that looked soft and inviting. His nose and his ears were endearing large and her worries drained away as his expression shifted rapidly from joy to fear and then back again.

“Rey? Is that you? How is this possible?” The deep rumble of his voice was coated in thick honey and her toes curled into the grass beneath her feet, but the content of his words turned her attention to more important matters.

“Rey? Is that my name?” She looked at him pleadingly, hoping that he had answers to the mysteries of her existence.

“You don’t know your name?” he asked quietly, and pain flashed across his face. He took a deep shuddering breath before taking another step closer and whispering, “Do you know me?”

She shook her head and he turned his face away. A deep sadness bloomed inside her when a tear slid down his cheek.

“Here,” he said gently, turning back to her and holding out the blanket. “You must be cold.”

She reached for it gratefully, wrapping herself in its delicious warmth a comforting scent that sent memories skittering at the edge of her mind, just outside her reach.

“Can we…would you come in? I mean, I won’t hurt you,” he promised.

She let him guide her inside and settle her at a table in the kitchen as he busied himself with finding her something to eat and warming her a cup of fragrant hot liquid.

“Tea,” she said, bringing it to her lips and sipping. The warmth it brought was welcome, as was the hunk of bread and cheese that he set before her. Her stomach twisted in need as the first bite reminded of hunger.

Her memories of things, the names of objects and details of previous experiences were returning. Maybe there was hope for the rest of her memories, as well.

He sat down across from her with a sigh. When he ran his hands through his hair, they were shaking, and he seemed to be having a hard time looking at her. Now that the morning sun was brightening the room, she could see how drawn and tired his face was. He looked ragged and exhausted, and he had bruises on cuts on his face and hands, the largest of which was a raw pink line that narrowly missed his eye as it bisected his right cheek and followed the line of his neck until it disappeared beneath the collar of the woolen shirt he had tugged on while the water for her tea had heated in the kettle.

The wound had been stitched by an inexperienced hand, possibly even his own, though it looked to be healing well enough that it would soon be time to remove them.

“What happened to you?” she asked, indicating the long gash.

He shook his head. “You really don’t remember anything?”

“Nothing. I didn’t even know my name until you told me. I still don’t know yours,” she hinted.

“Ben,” he croaked. “I’m Ben Solo.”

“Ben,” she repeated, the word flowing off her tongue. It was familiar to the muscles of her mouth, even if her mind did not know him.

“You’re Rey Solo,” he said, careful not to look at her when he spoke.

“You’re my family?” That might explain why he appeared so worried about her, why his name on her tongue had seemed so right. Her lips pulled into a frown- it didn’t feel right.

He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I suppose I am, in a way. I’m your husband.”

“Husband,” she said quietly. Another word that fit comfortably in her mouth. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“It does?” He looked so pleased, so relieved, that she smiled at him warmly.

He had a pleasant face, and a kind smile. She did not know him, but she was immediately at ease in his presence- safe and protected. It had not been the house that had brought her here- it had been him.

“It feels like I know you,” she explained. “Like some part of me recognizes you even though I don’t have the memories to explain it. You are something important to me. That’s how I found you.”

“How _did_ you find me? Where did you come from?”

She shrugged. “I woke up covered in soot and nothing else, sitting in a pile of ashes at the side of a road. I wanted to go home, so I walked until I came to you.”

“You just woke up? Were you…harmed?”

“Only this,” she said, extending her arm from beneath the blanket to show him the word on her arm. It still hurt miserably.

He sucked in a breath and pressed his eyes closed. She curled her fingers into the blanket to resist the urge to wipe away the tears that escaped from beneath the lashes on his cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Rey. I tried to stop them. I swear to you that I tried.” His voice was heavy with the weight of grief and regret. She believed him- he would not have allowed harm to come to her if he could have prevented it.

“Stop who? I don’t understand.” She wished viciously that she knew the answers to her questions. He wanted so desperately for her to be someone that she couldn’t remember, and she wanted desperately to soothe the sadness from his eyes.

“This is my fault,” he cried out, ignoring her question. “All of it! I fought them when they came for you, but there were too many of them. They carried you out of the house screaming my name and I couldn’t stop them.” His voice broke on a sob.

“I am sure that it was not your fault,” she soothed, but he groaned miserably and buried his face in his hands, pressing the palms to his eyes as though he could erase the memory of what he had seen.

“Did they hurt me?” she asked gently, hesitating only briefly before laying a comforting hand on his arm. Her instinct to stop his pain was strong that it was nearly overwhelming.

“They killed you,” he said, dropping his hands and looking up at her with haunted eyes. “I don’t think you are even real. You’re some dream that has come to drive me to madness.”

“I am not dead,” she said firmly, sitting up straight in her chair. “I don’t know if I was dead before, because I do not remember, but I am _certain_ that I am not dead now.”

“How could you not be? After what they did to you? I watched you die with my own eyes.”

He looked convinced that his words were true, but she could feel the beat of her own heart and the steady rush of air in and out of her lungs. “I do not know, but I know I am here.”

He looked at her hand, where it still rested gently in his arm and closed his eyes. “I can feel you,” he whispered. “Are you not a dream, after all?”

She waited in silence until he opened his eyes to look at her again. His brows drew together as he contemplated what to do with her in their current situation.

“Dream or not, you will be comfortable,” he announced at length. “We will get you clean and dressed and then we will need to tend to your wound. I cannot fathom not how it remains so fresh, but you will have a scar there eventually, a large one.” His tone was sympathetic, and he looked at her arm with a wince as he stood.

“We’ll have them to match, since the wound on your face is no small matter, either. Did you stitch it yourself?”

He pressed his fingers to his cheek absently, as though he had forgotten his own wound until she spoke and reminded him of it. “I did,” he confirmed. “With you gone, there was no one willing to help me. The neighbors are frightened and feared they would be next if they provided me with any aid.”

“They are frightened of the people who hurt me?”

“They fear for their lives and that of their families. The council has spies everywhere and it seems that it’s become nearly every week that someone is accused of witchcraft and consorting with the devil. Those who are condemned suffer the same fate that you did.”

She was not sure exactly what fate that had been, but she sensed that it would upset him to speak of it, so she did not ask any further questions as she turned and led him from the kitchen, thinking deeply over his words as she climbed the stairs and opened the first door to her left.

He leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed in front of his chest and watched quietly as she opened drawers to find undergarments and dug in the wardrobe for a simple gown, one designed for summer that had sleeves short enough to leave her wound exposed enough that it could be cleaned and dressed.

It wouldn’t do for there to be an infection, she thought as she used water from the basin to rinse away the soot and the grime. A full bath would have been preferable, but she would make do until a more convenient time. In the meanwhile, she should make a poultice for her arm. Ben could use it some on his face, as well, when she removed his stiches. His sewing never had been any good. The man couldn’t even sew on a button, bless him.

“You knew where our bedroom was,” he observed quietly once she had dried and begun to dress. “And your clothing.”

She paused, hands loose on the fabric of her gown and considered him with a frown. She _had_ come straight here without his help.

“I did,” she acknowledged, biting her lip in uncertainty. “Did I know the healing arts? I was just thinking about what would need to be done to keep our wounds clean and prevent infection.”

He nodded. “You treated the illnesses and injuries of everyone within a full day’s journey and helped the women deliver their babes. Witch work, according to the council. They have made a point to target healers and 'wild women'. You were both,” he said bitterly.

“I don’t think I like this council.”

He laughed, the sound full and rich in the small room. “You were a thorn in their side from the beginning. I was so afraid for you, but the town protected you and you protected as many of them as you could. It was just too much, in the end. People were too frightened of being accused themselves to stop it.”

“How long was I gone?” She meant really meant ‘ _How many have suffered in my absence_?’ but she couldn’t bring herself to speak the words aloud. Ben’s apparent suffering was enough of a burden to bear.

“Weeks,” he said cautiously. “I buried what was left of your body beneath a tree at the edge of our property. I still don’t understand…My mind tells me it must not be real, that you can only exist because of some dark magic or the devil, but you look so real. You seem so much like yourself.”

“I am myself…or at least I think I am.” But something stirred restlessly inside her, inspiring a question that she knew required an answer. “What if it _was_ the devil,” she asked, peaking up at him nervously from beneath her lashes.

He frowned for a moment, considering the implications. “Then I will give him my loyalty,” he said with conviction, “for returning you to me.”


	2. Stories You Thought Would Never Be Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are the stories you thought   
> Would never be taught- Wild Embers, Nikita Gill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW - Pregnancy, birth, babies, complicated childbirth in background character
> 
> *Rey serves as the local midwife, and a young woman comes to her for assistance because she is struggling with a breech birth. There is mention of risk to the life of the mother and child but the actual birth process itself is not described graphically

Her screams echoed in the light of an early dawn, and he knew they were chasing the remembered taste of smoke across her tongue.

Ben no longer panicked as he had the first several days that she had been home. Each morning now began like this, her dreams slipping her bits of memory that turned to nightmares that would fade away like ghosts once she opened her eyes. He hurried up the stairs to the bed that they had shared for the years of their marriage, the one where she now slept alone.

He was still a stranger to her, and he had not touched her beyond what was necessary. She was still stiff in his presence and it was enough for him to hear her feet on the stairs and the sound of her laughter once again.

The door to the bedroom creaked loudly when he opened it, but it wasn't enough to pull her from her sleep. She was tossing beneath the blankets, writhing in memories of pain that her mind could not stand to remember. Her face was contorted in lines of agony and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

He sat beside her, a gentle had too large on her fragile shoulder. “Rey, honey, wake up. It’s only the dream.” He knew it was a lie, that she would have to confront the memories eventually, but here in the gray light at the beginning of day, a lie was the only comfort he had to give.

Her eyes flew open, and for one unsettled moment, he thought he saw the orange and red reflection of flames dance across them before they faded to her usual hazel. He stilled the urge to make the sign against evil. This was Rey. If evil had touched her, it was through no fault of her own.

She sagged in relief against the pillows, and he watched as the fear and the panic slid back into place behind whatever wall her mind had made to protect her. Her smile was sweet but cautious as she looked at him, and pain laced through him as it did each time she looked at him with fear.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I don’t mean to keep waking you like this.”

“I would wake this way every day for the rest of my life if it meant waking to you,” he assured her. He meant it, his heart had been hers from the moment he had first laid eyes on her, but he did wish that her memories had not locked him out as well.

“You have such love for me, I can see it in your eyes. I wish I knew why,” she said earnestly, frustration creasing the smooth skin of her brow. “Will you stay with me? Tell me a story, Ben. Tell me...about me, about us.”

He swallowed when she moved over to make room for him to lie down beside her, but he could never have refused her anything, and even less so now that he truly knew the hell that his life would be without her.

She waited patiently with her cheek pressed into the pillow as she watched him struggle to find the words. He had never been good at talking, but for her he was willing to try.

“The first time I ever saw you,” he began, “you were wearing a blue dress. Your had come to town with your parents to visit your grandfather and you all attended our church with him for the first time that day. You smiled at me, and I knew then that you were the only woman I would ever want to marry…”

A soft smile played at the corner of her mouth as he spoke, and over the following days the stories became as much a part of their ritual as her nightmares. She woke with screams, and he soothed her with every happy memory that he could recall of their few years together.

He told of their wedding day, and how beautiful she had been in the simple dress she had worn. He told her of the evenings spent reading by the fire, and the summer days walking the fields hand in hand. He told her of nights spent in the barn worrying over laboring cows as the storms swirled outside the doors, and of her first pitiful attempts at milking one. Their lives were often hard and had no shortage of labor, but they had been happy.

It gave her no clearer memories of him, but she relaxed ever further in his presence, and stopped jumping when she looked up to find him in the same room with her.

By the second week, she asked him to sleep in the bed beside her, claiming that it made her nightmares less frightening, and soon after that she returned to holding his hand whenever he was within arm’s reach.

There were still animals to feed and fields to tend, and though they both knew that eventually they would have to face the world beyond their walls and the consequences of her apparent return from the dead, they were content for the time being to hide her away and let her healing unfold as it would.

As soon as she was well enough, comfortable enough being left alone, Ben’s plan was to go into town and sell their house and land to anyone who would have it. He was going to move her far away where no one would know her and begin their lives anew somewhere else. No one would question his decision to leave after everything that had happened here. Some families had already left to protect their loved ones or to escape the memories of what the council had taken from them.

The council would assume that they had broken him, and he was happy to let them think that as long as it allowed him to take Rey so far away from them that they could never hurt her again.

God, it seemed, had other plans.

It was the middle of the night when the wagon came, and for a moment Ben feared the worst- that they had somehow discovered her. He wondered as he jumped out of bed if it was possible that they had sent spies to watch the house, but a quick glance out the window showed him familiar, friendly faces.

These were people that had come here before, seeking Rey’s assistance as a healer. They lived more than a full day’s journey from here and had probably not heard news of her fate.

“I will turn them away, explain to them that you have died and cannot assist them,” he told her. “Wait here.”

“You cannot,” she said stubbornly. “They obviously need help.”

“From a dead woman? If they tell anyone that they saw you…”

“We will ask them not mention it to anyone,” she said simply, before wrapping her shawl over her shoulders and slipping quietly down the stairs to answer the pounding on the front door, leaving him staring after her and silently shaking his head.

His irritations were quickly dispelled when he finally followed after her and found the young man pacing near the front door, looking quite green with illness and worry, with an unfortunate amount of blood drying on the front of his shirt.

“It’s my wife,” he explained, not waiting for Ben to voice the question before hastening to provide an answer. “There is something wrong. The birth is taking too long. Rey said…she said the babe isn’t turned, that the feet are trying to come first and if she can’t turn it…”

Ben nodded, understanding well the consequences for mother and child. “She has turned babes before. It will be unpleasant for your wife, but if it can be done it may save them both.”

A chilling scream came from the smaller downstairs bedroom, one that was often used for birthings and housing the ill.

“I need to go. She will need help and fresh water.” The young man nodded; his face impossibly greener now that it had been a moment ago. Ben started to say more, to caution him that he must not reveal Rey’s presence here but…

“Ben!”

“Yes, I’m coming.”

The young husband was unlikely to remember anything said to him now anyway. “There are places to sit in the kitchen. Wait there,” Ben told him, before turning away to find his wife and assist her as best as he was able in welcoming new life into the world.

It was midday before the child was born, a hale and healthy boy, and by then both the young mother and Rey were exhausted from the effort of his miraculous arrival. The woman’s husband wept with gratitude at her bedside as his child nursed and his wife patted his hand fondly. She was still a bit pale, but it looked to Ben like some of the color was already returning to her cheeks.

He closed the door to give the new family privacy and found his own wife upstairs, changing into a fresh gown and rinsing the stains of childbirth from her hands.

“They will both live,” she announced with a smile, turning to welcome him when he paused in the doorway.

“Thanks to you,” he said. “Though, I worry that there will be consequences to this good deed.”

“Then let there be consequences,” she said dismissively with a shrug. “What should I have done? Let them die?”

“No…Maybe…I don’t know,” he admitted. “I love you for your kind heart, but I fear to lose you again.”

Her bluster faded and she sighed. “I would not lose you, either. I love you, Ben, even if I do not fully understand why. I cannot remember the details of our lives together as you can, but I know what I feel in my heart. I know I trust you. I know that you are a good man, and kind, and that you would care for me all the days of my life. I feel the connection to you, a strong thread that even death could not destroy.”

There were tears in his eyes as he crossed the room, though, thankfully, she did not remark upon it. She trembled slightly when he wrapped his arms around her and tucked her head beneath his chin, but she touched him freely and more often after that.

Each day she grew bolder and more affectionate and several days later, after they bundled the new family back into their wagon amidst many thanks and promises to tell no one that they had seen her, she stretched up onto her toes and kissed his cheek and then his lips before she wandered back into the house, absentmindedly humming his favorite hymn beneath her breath.

The feeling of her mouth on his occupied his mind the rest of the day, and he thought of little else as he did the last of his daily chores and sat quietly beside her at the evening meal.

The simple truth of the matter was that he stopped thinking of her that way. She had returned to him so broken and fragile and confused that touching her at all seemed like a precious gift. She had needed a safe place to heal, not a lover, so he had shut off all carnal thoughts of her. He hadn’t even considered something as simple as kissing her, not until she had kissed him first.

Now guilt hummed in his veins, because she had given him a chaste and affectionate gesture of love, and now he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. She had the sweetest mouth he had ever seen, soft and plush and pink. He knew what that mouth felt like under his own, and the flavor of its honeyed recesses.

He tried not to watch her as she finished the meal and carried the dishes to the kitchen, tried not to watch her as she sat in her chair afterward and nibbled her bottom lip with concentration as her nimble little fingers worked over the week's mending, the bright silver flash of the needle quick and steady as she went about her task. She had done nothing to entice, and he felt like a monster for wishing he could be with her again as a husband would have done, knowing that she didn't feel like a wife.

She looked up with a smile and caught him looking at her with lust in his eyes, some happy comment ready in her mouth that died on her lips as they parted in surprise…

Shame rushed through him as he jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room, mumbling his apologies on his way out the door. She called his name as went, but he couldn’t face what he knew would be her confusion and disappointment. How could he explain his unwelcome thoughts to her when he couldn’t explain them to himself?

He stayed in the barn, muttering excuses to his cows, until long after the light in their bedroom went out, but he knew he had to be there in the morning to wake her from her nightmares.

The door to their bedroom creaked when he opened it, and he sighed, swearing as he done countless times before that he was going to fix that noise.

“Ben?”

He froze in the dim light of the moon streaming in the windows as his name carried across the short distance between them. He could hear the tears in her voice, and he swallowed thickly.

“I’m here,” he told her, crossing the room to sink down onto the bed beside her, his words tumbling out recklessly in his desperation to stop her sadness. “I’m sorry, so sorry. I didn’t mean…I wasn’t trying to frighten you and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I swear I wasn’t even thinking about you that way, and then you kissed me and… not that it’s your fault…”

His explanations faded away as she leaned up and captured his lips with her own. He stayed motionless, afraid to move lest he frighten her away, until she hooked one slender arm around the back of his neck and lifted herself closer.

He sobbed out a relieved breath and hauled her against him, twisting his body as he did so until she was half seated in his lap as he rained desperate kisses over her face and her hair. There were still fresh tears on her cheeks, but there were words of love and encouragement on her lips that made him bolder and when he slid his tongue between her teeth to brush it tentatively against hers, she moaned in satisfaction and he felt like he had finally, finally come home.

He sank into the joy of kissing her, letting the sensations wash over him- she tasted familiar, like nothing had changed, and her lips were soft and giving as he slanted his own mouth over them. He shuddered in surprise when she trapped his bottom lip between her sharp little teeth and then soothed the pain with the gentle swipe of her tongue.

“We don’t, uh, we don’t have to…if you aren’t ready,” he stammered, but her hands were already reaching, sliding beneath the hem of his shirt and lifting it over his head in one smooth, confident motion.

There was no room between them for shame or doubt as she murmured her praise and ran her hands over his skin, rediscovering what had once been as familiar to her as her own body. He didn’t rush her, letting her take her time as her fingertips followed the curve of his chest, sucking in a startled breath as she rubbed a thumb over the flat button of a nipple, and then trailed a curious path down the flat expanse of his stomach, the muscles jumping beneath her touch.

He stilled her hand beneath his own much larger one when she reached for the fastenings on his trousers. “Wait, I…” His words caught in his throat when she tipped her face to look at him- her eyes were wide and vulnerable in the moonlight and her lips were plump and swollen from his kisses and parted slightly with desire. She was close enough that he count each priceless freckle that dusted the bridge of her nose and the curve of her cheeks.

He tugged up the bottom of her nightgown, the plain white cotton sliding softly over her skin as it rose slowly up her legs and over her hips. Her fingers twisted into the fabric beside his own as she helped guide it up the length of her stomach and past the gentle rise of her breasts. He pulled it over her head and her hair tumbled back down to rest against her bare shoulders, dark against her skin.

He rubbed the end of one silken lock of it between his fingers and trailed the fingertips of his other hand over her spine as he looked at her. She had always been beautiful, but now he might have sworn that light pulsed beneath her skin. Surely it was a trick of the moonlight on smooth pale flesh, but it still made her luminous and perfect under his gaze. 

She trembled, and he pulled her closer, wrapping her in his warmth and nipping a path across her jaw and down her neck. He kissed the juncture of her shoulder and traced the line of collar bone with his tongue. She shifted to give him better access to her body, and he reached his arms behind her, grasping one of her shoulders in each of his large hands and urging her to lean back until the angle thrust her chest forward while creating space for him to dip his own head capture one nipple between his teeth.

She sucked in a breath, arching her back in encouragement and plunging her hands into his hair to hold him close as he turned his attention to her other breast.

He rolled her beneath him, a sudden movement that had her clinging to his shoulders and squeaking in surprise, and plundered her mouth again with a passion that he tried viciously to tame. He wanted so much to be gentle, to go slowly…because he knew that if she didn’t remember _him_ , that she didn’t remember _this_.

She had come to their marriage bed a virgin, and her memories of lovemaking would be as absent as her memories of ever loving him at all.

“I want,” she panted, reaching between them and tugging again on the fastenings of his trousers. “Ben, _please_ ,” she whined.

“I know what you want," he assured her, "but you’ve been through so much. We can go slowly, I can be gentle,” he kissed her cheeks and nuzzled at the soft skin with the tip of his nose.

“Next time,” she insisted, and he clenched his teeth as her fingers worked his pants down over his hips and returned to wrap firmly around the length of him. She swiped her thumb over the head, smearing the liquid already beading at the tip. “I can’t explain it, but I know I needed this, needed you. I missed this, and I didn’t know how much until I saw you looking at me tonight with that heat in your eyes.”

He rested his forehead against hers and slid a hand between their bodies, searching with his fingers to determine if she was as ready for him as she claimed. She was already dripping for him when he parted her folds, and she let her legs fall open wider in eager welcome. Unable to resist any longer, he poised himself at her entrance and slid inside with one rough thrust.

A deep sigh ripped from her chest and her eyes drifted closed. She was content for a moment, seemingly satisfied with the complete joining of her bodies, before she began to shift demandingly beneath him, her nails digging into his hips as she urged him to move. She was hot and wet around him, and he needed no further urging as he set a smooth and commanding rhythm that he knew would carry her quickly to her peak. He had missed this, too, and he wasn’t sure how long he could delay his own climax.

He realized quickly that he need not have worried, it took only a few deep thrusts and passionately whispered words of love for her to begin to flutter around him. Her breathy little moans filled the air as she came undone beneath him and he began to move harder, faster until he tipped over the edge himself, spilling himself into her in a rush of warmth and pleasure.

She wrapped her legs around him and held him close, refusing to let him roll off her until his weight became too much for her much smaller frame. When she did let him move, she stayed close, her head resting on the center of his chest and rising and falling with each breath that he took.

He cleared his throat, “Are you…alright? Was I too rough for you?’

She turned her head slightly peaking up at him from beneath her lashes. She was flush and pink cheeked, and a small smile played at the corner of her well kissed mouth. “You weren’t too rough. I’m not fragile.”

The rough pad of his thumb traced gentle circles over the soft skin of her shoulder as he frowned at her. “You are, though. Fragile. Maybe not your body, you always were strong for such a tiny thing, and not your heart, that’s as stubborn and loving as always…but your mind. You’ve always been smart, you’re still smart, but now there’s so much that you don’t remember, and it makes you afraid and worried all the time. Maybe even almost as much as you would be if you _did_ remember.”

“I’m not afraid _of you_ ,” she told him firmly, and though she didn’t argue with the rest of what he said, it was enough to put his mind at ease somewhat. “I may not remember doing this with you before, but like everything else about you, it’s familiar and it’s comforting and it’s _home.”_

He sighed, and her head bounced a little on his chest. “I can understand that. I thought I’d die, too, when I lost you. We need to leave this place as soon as we can. We can’t wait here for them to find you.”

She nodded, and he knew she had no choice but to trust his judgment. There was little she could do to help, when she was facing a danger that she didn’t remember. Her life since she had come back from the dead stopped at the boundary line of their property, and she knew nothing of the world beyond it. “I will go anywhere with you,” she promised.

He drifted off to sleep to the sound of her breathing and woke to the familiar sound of her screams.


	3. Should Have Checked the Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They should have checked the ashes  
> Of the women they burned alive- Wild Embers, Nikita Gill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW- This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence done in the name of religion

Rey thrashed in the arms that held her, her eyes searching wildly for Ben and her toes barely brushing the stairs as they carried her down to the first floor. Her body supported between the two largest of the men that had burst into her bedroom and pulled her screaming from Ben’s side, but there were several others still upstairs, still in the room with the man who loved her and her fear for him and what they might do to him was stronger than her fear for herself.

She had already died, after all, and the thought was somehow less frightening in the knowledge that it could be overcome.

It was different for Ben. He must be terrified for both of them. She could hear him somewhere above her, his shouts of rage and fear turning to grunts of pain that served as an eerie echo to the sound of fists on flesh. Her husband was a large man, but there were too many of them for him to be able to take them all on alone, especially when they had no qualms about the level of violence that they were willing to inflict to subdue him.

Raw terror turned her body numb and felt like she was a specter, watching from a safe distance as they carried her out into the yard, exhausted from fighting them and now hanging limply from where their fingers dug into her arms.

One of them grabbed her by the hair, forcing her head back until she was staring up at the full moon that hung heavy in the night sky.

“It is her,” a voice declared, and Rey turned her head, twisting defiantly against his grip in her hair, to look at the tall, sallow man that seemed to be their leader. His face was scarred, disfigured by injury, but that wasn’t what made him ugly. It was the light of cruelty in his eyes, the zeal for power and the thirst for destruction. It was not faith in God that had brought him here, not this time and never before. It was the sickness in his soul.

Every man in the yard shifted uncomfortably at his words, and it was clear that they hadn’t believed whatever rumor had brought them to her home in the middle of the night, torches blazing in the darkness. She was dead, they had seen it with their own eyes. Several of them spit into the dirt and made the sign against evil.

“But Snoke, how could this be the same lady? We killed her, didn’t we? We saw what happened to her.”

“We’ll kill her again,” he announced, and it was impossible to miss the satisfaction in his voice. “Then we’ll see if the devil spits her out twice. I doubt he’ll be so generous a second time.”

A red-haired man with a sneer on his face stepped forward boldly. “And Ben? He was hard enough to keep hold of the first time. I don’t want anything to do with him coming after me.”

“We’ll kill him with her this time, just to be sure,” he answered, and then jerked his head to indicate someplace over her shoulder. “Them too. People will learn the consequences of seeking out the services of witches.”

There was a scream, cut short by a cracking slap that caused it to turn into muffled sobbing, and Rey yanked her body away, turning to look at who else was being made to suffer for her this night.

The young mother she had helped was slouched in the seat of her wagon with her baby boy clutched tight to her chest. Her husband had his arms wrapped protectively around them both, but like Ben, he was outnumbered and overpowered.

A whine escaped the young woman’s lips when she saw Rey. “We didn’t mean to tell them. We just wanted to go home…”

“It’s alright,” Rey said, her voice as soothing as she could make it. They bore no fault in this, had obviously been stopped and interrogated on the road.

She shot a look of pure disgust at Snoke, hate curling in her belly at any man that could treat an innocent family so terribly. The babe was not even a week old, and Rey knew from the cruel twist f Snoke’s lips that he didn’t intend for even the child to be spared this time.

The ground beneath her feet grew hot, but before she could make sense of it, or do anything to help the poor souls that were damned to die beside her, four men emerged from the front door, dragging Ben’s limp and bloody form between them. His head was hanging between his shoulders and Rey knew immediately that the only way had they had been able to control him was to beat him until he was unconscious. Whatever kind of a fight he put up the first time, he would have been a hundred times worse now.

He would rather die than watch them kill her again.

The sight of what they had done to him had heat coursing through Rey, a trembling rage that burned just beneath the skin. These foul beasts had hurt him, they had beaten him, and broken his body.

“Please,” she begged, grasping at Snoke’s sleeve with her fingers in desperation. “Take me, just me, and leave the rest. Please, I’m begging you, have mercy.”

“Mercy?” he sneered. “That’s what you said last time. _Mercy, mercy, won’t you please have mercy?”_ His voice was high and mocking, a derisive imitation of her own as she had begged for her leniency, for humanity.

She tensed as the wall that had held her memories at bay crumbled beneath her anger, revealing to her the truth that she hadn’t been able to face.

***

They had tied her hands the first time they had come and forced her to make the long walk to the burning field barefoot and stumbling behind their horses. She had sobbed as they drove her ruthlessly along, her body shaking with it and a high keening wail tearing from her throat that she hadn’t realized was coming from her own body until Hux had hit her in the side of her face to silence her.

He was a vile man, one of Snoke’s favorites on the council, but not until that night had she seen him for what he truly was. It was not until that night, that she had truly seen any of them.

She had been so frightened, but not only for herself.

Ben had fought them when they came, screaming her name as they took her. He had used his fists until they were bloody at the knuckles and several of the men that had come had sported broken noses, split lips, and blackened eyes. She was fairly certain that at least one had a broken arm, another several broken ribs.

They had finally bound Ben with a length of rope much shorter than her own and forced onto the back of a horse, laughing as he struggled against his bonds. She had hoped they would leave him behind, spare him whatever cruel fate they had planned for her, but God had not been kind enough to grant her even that small indulgence.

It would have been cruel enough for him to know that he had not been able to stop them from taking her, but they seemed determined to deal pain and misery as much as they could, and so they kept him where she was always in his view, his eyes always locked onto where she walked, sobbing and terrified but always kept just out of his reach.

His shoulders were slumped in defeat as they marched her along, and the sight of it only made her cry harder. He had always seemed bigger than life in her eyes, so strong and capable. It hurt her heart that he would not forgive himself for whatever they did to her.

She prayed as she walked, for herself and for Ben, the memorized litanies blurring and flowing together until all she was aware of was the plea in her heart. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…Hail Mary, full of grace, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death…Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me…”

Her prayers received no answer and by the time they made it the small clearing where her life would end, her feet were bloody from tripping over sharp rocks and protruding tree roots and her dress was tattered and torn at the hem.

“Tie him down,” Snoke barked, walking over to Ben and forcing his head back so that he could smile into the younger man’s terrified face. “We wouldn’t want him to miss this.”

Hux laughed as he forced Ben onto his knees, the rope biting into his wrists to prevent him from being able to stand or even turn away. “She will suffer, and you will watch. It will be your penance, for marrying a servant of the devil.”

“She’s not! She serves God and you are the devil here!” His voice was awash in anguish and defiance. She would have given anything to spare him this torment, but Hux was insulted by his outburst and there was nothing she could do stop what happened next.

She cried out when they cut him, the blade flashing sharp in the torchlight and narrowly missing his eye. The cut was deep and bisected the right side of his chest, neck, and cheek- coming to rest somewhere over his right eyebrow.

He sagged in his bonds, blood pouring out of the wound to soak his shirt and the ground beneath him.

“Please, stop,” she begged. “Mercy, please, please…I beg for your mercy. Don’t hurt him, please don’t him.” 

“You should be more worried for yourself,” Snoke told her, throwing her down and pressing his foot into her back to keep her down. Her cheek was pressed into the cold earth, her eyes fixed on the spot where her lover bled into the dirt. 

Hux spit on Ben’s bloody form, giving him a vicious kick when he began to pull weakly against the ropes that held him. “That ought to shut him up. Now, we’ll deal with her. She’s got her own penance coming.”

She fought them- thrashing and kicking and biting as they dragged her further away from the path and into the clearing. She could see it now, the pile of brush and the long pillar that they already driven into the ground.

Everything had been prepared before they ever came for her.

They tossed a torch into a smaller bundle of wood, a small fire flaring to life and pushing back the darkness. Their faces looked unholy in the gleam it cast, shadows dancing in their eyes and the hollows of their cheeks and on the ground. Snoke’s smile was foul as he laid a metal bar into the flames. They forced her to watch as it heated, as the dull metallic surface turned black and then gained its own menacing red glow.

She prayed, her words an endless stream of garbled and broken versus that she couldn’t quite grasp as they tore the fabric of her dress away from her arm to reveal the smooth skin beneath. “Mercy, please, please God…”

Her prayers turned to screams that tore from her chest as they pressed the hot metal into her skin again and again, the word slowly taking shape as her arm flinched and trembled. Their fingers dug into her, holding her down as she pulled and strained against the pain. The smell of burnt flesh was acrid in her nostrils, but it was not as offensive as the sound of their laughter or the echo of ben’s bellows of anguish in her ears.

When they were done, they let her fall, crumpled and whimpering, while they arranged the rest of the wood closer to the place that they intended to use to build her funeral pyre. Hux kneeled beside her, lifting her arm until the wounds they had inflicted were held in front of her eyes.

WITCH

“What do you think about that, hmm? The devil will know you’re his as soon as you meet him.” He watched stoically as the others turned back to fetch her. “It won’t be long now.”

Several of them spit on her as they drug her to the pyre and the largest of them, the one who bound her hands and feet to the roughly hewn pole, cracked a slap against her cheek that split her lip against her teeth and blooded the inside her mouth with the taste of blood. It bloomed in her mouth, harsh and metallic.

It was pain, and it was life.

She could see Ben in the firelight, sobbing brokenly and struggling against the ropes that held him in place. She could hear him over the crackle of fire as they set the dry brush against her legs and it took to the flames from the torches.

He was staring at her like they had taken everything from him. Like she was the only thing that had made his life with living and now that had been snatched away.

She prayed again as she began to choke on the billowing plumes of smoke rising from her death pyre. The flames licked close enough to her toes that she flinched away with a cry of agony, and she knew that it was only the beginning. In moments she would be consumed by pain, her life and her love taken from her at the hands of devils that called themselves men, and God had not come for her, as he had not come for the others.

She had been a good woman, a loving and faithful servant, and it had come to this.

In her last moments, when pain tore through her body and reduced her mind to the barest instincts of rage and revenge, she reached for something else. No one noticed the words mixed incomprehensibly into her screams, they were too busy cheering her demise. They didn’t notice the pleas, or the promises, or the exchange of innocence for the burgeoning tendrils of power that pulsed in the flames.

The last thing that she had known was pain, but that had strengthened her resolve, given her access to the hungry darkness that schemed and sulked at the edges of the flames. She went to her death willingly, knowing that when she returned, she was bringing hell with her.

***

Mercy, mercy…

The words echoed in her mind as she shook the memories from her eyes and looked up to find Ben watching her. He was sad and broken, certain that he had failed her for a second time, but something in her eyes must have reached him, because he stared at her in awe when she smiled.

The ground rumbled beneath her feet, and the hands holding her pulled away in terror as their hands burned where it touched her skin. The word ‘witch’ on her arm glowed with red fire as they stumbled away, prayers for mercy and salvation on their lips, but it was far too late for that.

They had shown her no mercy, and she had none to give.


	4. A Single Wild Ember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it takes a single wild ember  
> To bring a whole wildfire to life- Wild Embers, Nikita Gill

The screams that filled the night air were not hers, not this time.

The men who had come for her- those whose hands had run red with the blood of innocents, who had laughed at the tears of their victims- now wept and begged for the salvation that they had refused to grant as the shadows lengthened unnaturally at her feet and curled in possessive tendrils up her body.

They had burned it into her, their accusations of diabolism, as they had done to so many others.

WITCH

They had been blinded by their weakness, blinded by their hatred. They had hunted that which they did not understand and it was only now, confronted with the truth of the thing that they had made, that they understood the true meaning of the word, the true power that the darkness could give.

The first of them to fall did so on a strangled cry, his legs wrenched from under him by the swirling shadows that followed every command of her mind. He twisted, his fingers clawing uselessly into the dirt, as they pulled him across the ground to his doom.

He sobbed brokenly when the shadows lifted him up, the tendrils digging into him like claws and forcing him to look into the eyes of the woman that had become the thing he feared above all else.

“Please,” he begged. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“Hurt you?” she repeated, her smile hungry. “I return only the pain that you have given. I remember what you have done to me…I know what you would have done to them.”

His eyes flicked nervously to Ben and to the family in their wagon, crouched low in their seats and watching her with terrified eyes.

“Would you have shown them the kindness that you ask of me now?”

His silence was his answer.

“I thought not. The devil had your name on his list long before my bones burned in the night, I offered only to hasten your delivery to his lair. Your hell is one of your own making.”

He whined, eyes wild, when the shadows that gripped him began to writhe and drag him away, further from the light of the torches and into the darkness of the night. Rey turned her face away. Whatever happened to him now was between him and the devil.

The others had run, scattering down the path that led back to the main road or into the woods. It didn’t matter, they wouldn’t get far. She could feel them, the targets of her righteous fury. Another perk in the deal she’d made, they could never run far enough or fast enough to escape from her. All of them were dead men walking, not much different from herself in that sense which made her lips twitch in amusement. The woods were full of the walking dead tonight.

Her feet left patches of scorched grass and earth as she strode purposefully after them, ignoring for now the sound of Ben calling her name. There would be time for explanations soon enough.

She returned to him not long later, having seen all but a handful of her quarry dragged screaming into the arms of the devil. Hux had been among the first to flee, and Snoke right after him, but she had decided against chasing them any further without dealing with her own house. Their deaths would be sweetest, and inevitable- tied on the end of a string as they were.

“Rey,” Ben’s shout was breathy and desperate, and he snatched her up without heed for the darkness that still trembled on the air around her. “What happened?”

“I remembered,” she said simply.

“You remember me?” He pulled back, eyes searching her face desperately, hopefully for confirmation.

It was sweet in her heart, a bubbling of adoration and protectiveness, that after all he had seen tonight that was what most concerned him.

“Yes, I remember you.” She cupped his cheek in her hand, her skin simmering with the soft warm of her emotions. “And I love you with all of my heart.”

He kissed her, his passion its own burning thing, until she was limp and breathless in his arms. He poured all of himself into her- his joy, his relief, his gratitude. He had seen it all, he knew what she had become, but he had not turned from her.

It was only after she pulled away, her head hazy and limbs light, that she realized that were alone in front of the house.

“Where did they go? The family, the baby? They weren’t taken, were they?” Her hands gripped his arms as she twisted, searching the darkness for signs that they were in danger.

“No, they weren’t taken. They were merely frightened. Grateful of course- that’s the second time that you’ve saved their lives- but you were…magnificent and terrifying and unholy.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed. “Do you think they’ll…”

“No, whatever they believe happened here, you are safe from them. Give them a few days and they’ll be telling the countryside that you’re an avenging angel.” He looked at her, considering, and then asked, “That’s not what you are, though, is it?”

She huffed out a breath, deciding that the truth would be simpler than a lie. “No, it isn’t. I asked for God to save me, but He didn’t come.”

“What did?” His face was pinched with worry now, but his hands on her arms were still steady.

“They said I was a servant of the devil, and I became one. He wanted them, Snoke and Hux and the others. He offered me my life back in exchange for providing that. I’m to spend the rest of the gift he gave me as a witch, and a reaper of dark souls.”

“And what of _your_ soul, when your life is done?”

She smiled her teeth pointed and her eyes flashing red in the light. “It remains my own. He stands to gain far more from those I send to him, than my own soul is worth.”

“Innocents…”

“No, only those that are already marked for the devil himself. He is…impatient.”

He dropped his forehead until it rested on hers and his muscles trembled beneath her hands. There was nothing that he could do change the deal that she had made, and she instinctively that he wouldn’t have changed it even if he had been able. She had a lifetime beside him, and he would not waste it.

***

He did not go with her when she went to town.

She was grateful, actually, that he stayed behind. He was a gentle soul, a kind man. There was still some part of him that would not rebel against the necessity of what had to be done, that would weep for the loss of even those who had been most cruel to him. It was better by far to spare him that anguish.

He would never ask her what happened, and she would never tell him.

Most of the men that escaped her were paltry targets, wet faced and cowering, she dispensed with them quickly and felt no pleasure in the doing of it.

She found Hux stuffing clothes into a bag with wild panic in his eyes. The locks that he had clicked into place on the doors had made her laugh. As if he could keep her out, as if he didn’t already belong to her.

No barrier could keep her out, no weapons from his hand could harm her. He was tougher than the others on the surface, but his pathetic attempts to defend himself were fruitless, and when she cut him- giving him a wound to match the one that he carved so ruthlessly into Ben- he cried like the coward he had always been.

She gave him to the shadows, his blood splashed on the hem of her gown, and turned her attention to the last of those whose owed her.

Snoke smiled when she came, his mouth twisted around with the same cruelty that he had worn as he watched her burn. There was no remorse, no fear in his eyes.

“Witch,” he snarled. “Servant of the devil.”

“He wants what belongs to him,” she said, and the shadows at her feet leapt and snarled with their greed.

“I gave him you, is that not enough?”

“No, not nearly enough. I burned once, and you will burn for eternity.”

“I do not fear you,” he told her, but the fear sparked in his eyes when the flames sparked in her hands.

“You don’t need to. It won’t change your fate.”

She let the flames have him first- giving him a taste of the way they kissed over the skin, they way they danced across the bones- before she let the shadows take him screaming into the abyss.

Ben’s eyes searched her over carefully when she returned, reassuring himself that the blood on her gown and the scent of smoke and charred flesh that clung to her hair were not from her own injuries.

He peeled her dress off and tossed it into the fire, washed the ash from her skin until she was clean and rosy beneath his hands. She rested her chin in his head and sighed deeply.

“I’m glad you’re home.”

She knew he meant more than her return from unpleasant errands, and she kissed the top of his head with a smile. “So am I.”


End file.
